Kiss Records - 2009
3.5/10
More than a decade after what should have been the final Kiss album, we got one that truly showed the band’s age in Sonic Boom. Sounding as cartoonish as the album art looks, we’ve finally reached a point of making music just to make music. Though the makeup stuck since its reintroduction, Eric Singer was brought back behind the kit, and their guitar tech Tommy Thayer would wield the lead guitar roles, but both would retain the Catman and Spaceman characters respectively. The record also included a disc of completely unneeded re-recordings of classics, truly sealing it as a desperate shot at relevance that flopped hard (and a 6-song live DVD).
Ignoring that entirely, Sonic Boom is a glaring example of rock that merely exists, being their best example of why decent playing can’t save boring songwriting since Animalize. The only difference is that this doesn’t even have that one single good song to make hearing it worthwhile. Opener “Modern Day Delilah” was boosted to serve as the record’s single, but I really struggle to see what was even accidentally appealing about it. To make matters worse, there’s also the painful mental imagery of old guys having sex with “Hot And Cold” or “Yes I Know (Nobody’s Perfect),” a flaw that Psycho Circus would have us thinking they’d dodge.
Speaking of that record, it was at least able to hide the band’s age even though everyone knew that by then they were entering (or in) their 50s. Eleven years later and touching their early 60s couldn’t conceal this, as Paul’s staple highs do absolutely nothing even remotely compelling in any of his songs. Just like with good playing, production can’t save bad or aged songwriting. The anthemic chorus of “Stand” reaches hard, likely being the closest to a good song on the album, but that’s really setting the bar low.
You’d think this would serve as a lesson that perhaps ending on a good note in 1998 was the correct move, instead of shitting out yet another album a few years later again. It’s the first of two Kiss albums I can say I actively remember being released. My naive thirteen year old self was excited as hell, since his first musical heroes ever were making music in his lifetime (and releasing it on his birthday). But even a newly fourteen year old me saw zero redeeming qualities in this shortly after it came out. Forty three minutes of background noise ranging from existing to bad couldn’t even impress a young teen with its novelty of existence.
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